Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tried to turn the American Revolution into a left-wing lecture about billionaires, and somewhere in the great classroom beyond, even the great fabricator Howard Zinn probably winced.
During a May appearance at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, AOC argued that “the American Revolution was against the billionaires of their time.”
As the Chicago Sun Times reported, AOC had a mouthful.
The New York City progressive began her 90-minute conversation with political strategist David Axelrod by addressing a comment she made on Thursday that “you can’t earn a billion dollars” legitimately. The five-term congresswoman offered clarification by saying she opposes systems that create billionaires, not individual people.
“When we criticize the system, the system has gotten so concentrated that [billionaires] take it as criticism of themselves,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We need to revisit the tax systems that we have already had in the history of our country, because when it comes to tax it is not just about money, but it is about the construction and organization of oligarchy in our economy.”
She tied 1776 to today’s progressive war against wealth and power.
Unfortunately for both AOC and Zinn, history remains stubborn. The Revolution grew out of British rule, parliamentary taxation, colonial self-government, and years of anger over decisions made an ocean away.
In case we forgot, colonists objected to the Stamp Act and Townshend duties because Parliament taxed them without their consent. “No taxation without representation” still explains the fight better than “no billionaire without permission from AOC.”
The billionaire line also collapses under the men who made independence possible. John Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, ranked among the wealthiest men in the colonies and backed the patriot cause.
Robert Morris, superintendent of finance for the United States, helped bankroll the Revolution and used his personal credit to keep the Continental Army supplied.
Haym Salomon, a Polish Jewish immigrant and broker, raised and loaned crucial money to support the American cause. A class war against rich men makes less sense when rich men helped keep somebody named George Washington’s army alive.
The conflict began after Britain tightened control following the French and Indian War. King George III, Parliament, and British ministers expected the colonies to help pay imperial debts.
Colonial resistance grew through protests, boycotts, the Boston Tea Party, the Intolerable Acts, and the first shots fired at Lexington and Concord in April 1775.
By July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson’s draft listing grievances against the king, not against merchants who had done too well in business.
AOC’s version turns a serious struggle for self-government into a campaign-trail cartoon. The founders argued over power, consent, liberty, property, representation, and the rights of Englishmen. They weren’t plotting to punish success. They wanted a government that couldn’t treat people like revenue livestock while denying them a seat at the table.
If AOC wants to debate modern wealth, fine.
Dragging 1776 into a class-war costume party insults the men who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to separate from a crown.
Bad history teaches younger Americans to see their country through a cracked lens. The revolution deserves better than being squeezed into the latest ideological container; it gave the world a republic built on ordered liberty, representation, and limits on government power.
AOC tried to make 1776 sound like a complaint about billionaires, but the real story remains larger, braver, and much harder to reduce to a campus applause line.
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